By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
There is a story that's being told in John Olive's fanciful “The Voice of the Prairie,” recalling the early dreams of radio in the 1920s and the earlier dreams of a vast new country taking shape across the empty prairies of Nebraska in the 1890s.
But the production directed by Maryann Green at Live Theatre Workshop isn't so much about the unrolling of a plot as it is about the creation of an atmosphere. Depicting a place where people could imagine anything they wanted at a time when there weren't many rules around to hold them back.
Christopher Younggren, Samantha Cormier and Josh Parra catch that spirit and give it life playing some 20 characters who remind us of that sweet innocence we love to believe once made America a great country...and also a biting awareness of so much that has been lost as the west was tamed and laws were made and regulations enforced and...
Well, quite a lot had changed. Adding to this ephemeral sense of radio's many possibilities becoming tamed down to a handful of realities is Olive's decision to create his play with an equally unstructured format where scenes blend into each other out of order, like your own memories of adolescence and which of your loves came first. And the one love that never came at all.
Stirred in there is the wonder of art and who gets to decide what is art and what isn't. Olive reminds us it isn't the artist who makes that decision, it is the audience. If enough people really like something, than it must be art. Or at least it's good entertainment. Pioneer radio producers were hungry for good entertainment.
Younggren has continued to challenge himself with more demanding roles after re-settling in Tucson following a 25-year acting career in much bigger cities. This is his best yet, a performance of depth first as the young plainsman Davie who wandered onto a farm and rescued the spunky blind teen girl Frankie, who was kept prisoner by her father; then as the storyteller later in life sitting in front of a primitive microphone recounting the unscripted adventures of Davie and Frankie on ad hoc radio shows by enterprising promoters desperate to find people they could “put on the air” to attract more people to buy more radios.
When we meet middle-aged Davie he has no idea why people like to hear his stories about being a runaway kid riding the rails with Frankie. He seems to think there were lots of kids like that as the 20th century began. He feels guilty about taking money just for telling his stories (though he's not above accepting a drink if you are so inclined).
Parra has a couple of juicy parts. First as the enterprising con artist setting up unlicensed radio broadcasts that make Davie popular and then as the asthmatic cleric who is Frankie's self-appointed guardian years later. Parra is the comedy relief in a loud plaid sport coat, but also entertaining in black with a completely different personality as the minister.
Cormier makes Frankie both admirable and sympathetic, full of spunk but keenly aware of her vulnerability as a blind girl in an unbridled land. We feel what Frankie feels, the joy, the terror and the tribulation. Her performance is a gem.
“The Voice of the Prairie” continues through Dec. 23 with performances Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays 3 p.m. at Live Theatre Workshop, 5317 E. Speedway Blvd. Tickets are $20. For details and reservations, 327-4242 or livetheatreworkshop.org
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